Re: Update to comunity about challenges on NomCom selection

[Warren Kumari <warren@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Jul 19, 2024 at 9:32 PM, Christian Huitema <huitema@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 7/19/2024 7:12 PM, NomCom Chair 2024 wrote:

Hello,

For full transparency about the NomCom voting member selection process, I am sending this email.

During the challenge period, some community members raised objections about Kiran Makhijani's status as an independent volunteer. Martin and I received a satisfactory explanation regarding Kiran's independent status, and according to the RFC 9389 eligibility requirements, she qualifies to serve on the NomCom 2024 as voting member.

There is a possible question: when can a volunteer be considered independent? Is a grace period needed between their last employer and achieving independent status?

That's a good question. There are probably no clear cut answers. In some cases, people leave their employers because they are pushed out, and they will have no tie at all. In other cases, people retire and have investments in their former employer's stock and are thus interested in the continuous success of that employer. Or they may have good friends and former colleagues still working there. I suspect that there are no clear cut rules, and that whatever information is used to decide is better kept private.

Having the nomcom chair decide after a private discussion looks like a good solution.

+lots.

We do seem to have a tendency to view NomCom appointed positions as something hugely valuable to an employer, and engineer the process to avoid Machiavellian gaming scenarios.  It feels like many years ago there was more risk of companies getting up to shenanigans, but these days it seems like the harder issue is convincing employers to support people running at all. 

While I fully support the https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9389#section-4.1.2 rule, I think that we run the risk of over-complicating things. Just because someone worked for Acme Anvil until a few days before the NomCom was seated doesn't mean that they would automatically want to support an Acme employee — they *might* have just quit because their massive pile of stock options vested, but they might equally have been laid off[0][1].

Much of the strength of the IETF process is that we try and do the right thing over blind adherence to policy — we have a random selection of the community (instead of an algorithm) running the NomCom process, let's give them the flexibility to "Do The Right Thing" instead of over-processing them. 

W

[0]: Or fired for pushing an update file full of null-bytes (....too soon? :-))

[1]: I suspect that it's actually more likely that someone would support a candidate because they are good friends with them (or reject them because they make a snarky comment during last call on a draft, or because they spilt coffee on their laptop at IETF63 in Paris in 2005, or… ) than because they happen to work for the same company… 

-- Christian Huitema